Let me get out of the way that there are some things missing from GovTrack 2.0 that were in the old site, and if you need them you can still find them for now at http://legacy.govtrack.us, which continues to run the old site. I apologize for discontinuing some features, such as information on amendments, but with the site’s tiny budget I’m just not able to keep everything running at once.

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Why all the changes? Websites are like cars. After eight years you spend more time and money on repairs than you’d care to admit. Things started to break. Email updates and bill text were on the fritz lately. The best way to move forward was to buy the new shiny car. I started working on the new site 14 months ago, hiring more help than I’ve ever brought on in the past. While GovTrack 2.0 is no where near finished, it got to the point this weekend where it was at least as good as what we had.

GovTrack helps you find the status of U.S. federal legislation, voting records for the Senate and House of Representatives, information on Members of Congress, and congressional district maps.

Much of the information shown on GovTrack is assembled in an automated way from official government websites. primarily the website THOMAS which is the official website for the status of legislation run by the Library of Congress. The process of gathering the information is entirely automatic and Congress isn’t always very happy to share, so you may find occasional errors here, but we take errors very seriously and work hard to correct them.

The status and text of legislation is usually delayed by about 24 hours and roll call votes usually appear on the site within an hour. We can only get information as fast as the official sites are updated. Our database also extends into the past. You can search and browse bills going back to the 93rd Congress — that’s 1973-74 — and the text of legislation goes back as far as the 106th Congress (1999-2000). Roll call votes are available back to the start of our nation!

Btw, GovTrack.us is a free resource. (-:

About Gary Price

Gary Price (gprice@mediasourceinc.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area. Before launching INFOdocket, Price and Shirl Kennedy were the founders and senior editors at ResourceShelf and DocuTicker for 10 years. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com, and is currently a contributing editor at Search Engine Land.